Mites, not
pesticides, including neonicitinoid seed-treatment pesticides, are the biggest
killer of bee colonies, a professor from Dalhousie University told the House of
Commons Agriculture Committee this week.

Habitat loss and poor
beekeeping practices are other major threats, said Chris Cutler, an associate
professor in the department of environmental sciences at Dalhousie and also a
beekeeper.

Pesticides are, indeed, a
major threat, he said, but another challenge is a lack of information on wild
bees, which are vital to food production. There are about 1,000 bee species in
Canada.

“In terms of their
population dynamics and long-term community distributions and prevalence of
different species, we know next to nothing about many of them,” Cutler said.

“This is just another
cautionary message about making blanket statements about all the bees being in
decline. We actually lack a lot of data.”

He
said the issue isn’t just limited to those outside the industry, but that
beekeepers themselves need to better understand what’s happening.

“Education is the issue
that needs to be really tackled among beekeepers,” he said.

“You can have hives in the
exact same location and half of them will live and half of them will die, and I
won’t really be able to understand why.”

There’s a strong sense in
the apiculture sector that “beekeeper extension work is key in terms of
improving the health of honeybees across the country.”

Kevin Nixon, an Alberta
beekeeper and chair of the Canadian Honey Council, said bee issues have
received a lot of misleading media attention.

“Unfortunately, most of the
media has not been willing to present all the factors affecting bee health, but
is aimed at only a single factor, being pesticides,” Nixon said. “There are
many factors affecting bee health.”

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

The critics of wind turbines are
dismissing a provincial government study before it has been completed and published.

Jane Wilson of North Gower, president
of Wind Concerns Ontario, says the Ontario Ministry for the Environment and
Climate Change, is taking too narrow an approach to investigating the health
impacts of noises from the turbines.

“In short, by relying on testing for
audible noise only, and only testing outdoors, the MOECC is not getting the
whole picture on the reason for the hundreds upon hundreds of noise complaints
throughout rural Ontario.

“The real culprit appears to be low-frequency
noise which is a ‘sensation’ for many people.

“We believe the MOECC needs to take
residents' noise complaints seriously, act, and report publicly on what they do,Wilson says in an e-mail to Ontario
Farmer.

“The MOECC persists in the standard
of using one form of noise measurement, the dBA, while the acoustics industry
and even the Government of Canada has said this is providing only part of the
picture on noise emissions,” Wilson says.

In news release, the organization
says “the process of confirming turbine compliance with regulations is
convoluted and complex — people have lost trust in the Ontario government.

“For example, the Enbridge project
near Kincardine began operation in late 2008 but there is still no report that
confirms the turbines are compliant.

“The MOECC also relies on information
from the power developers, and predicted modelling — not actual noise testing.
This has resulted in a loss of faith in the Wynne government as a protector of
public health.”

Canada Pork
International has a technology to measure pork quality and if it’s adopted,
could make Canada a world leader in export markets.

The
technology builds on a colour-measuring device that launched in 2012 and is now
widely used by Canadian pork packers.

“We want to create an actual pork grading system that will
give Canada the edge as an innovator and allow us to select the absolute best
product for the right market,” said Michael Young, vice-president for technical
programs and marketing services with Canada Pork International.

"There is no meat quality based grading system that I'm aware of in the world
now.

Most grading systems that are out there are based on lean meat, basically the
meat to bone ratio and lean meat.

"This would allow Canada, number one, to be first with a meat quality based selection
system so we would be the first to have this and it would allow us to reduce
inconsistencies in product quality and again get the right products to the
right market.

"That's critical for supplying," said Young.

"The consistency of the quality is critical for our end user partners."

Young acknowledges the idea is still in its infancy but there is interest in
the concept.

Farmers are among the most vulnerable
when it comes to mental health, according to a new study from the University of
Guelph.

Yet they are reluctant to seek
medical help because of the stigma attached to fragile mental health.

Stress, anxiety, depression,
emotional exhaustion and burnout are all higher among farmers than among other
groups, early findings of the survey show.

As well, Canadian farmers are more
stressed than those living and working elsewhere.

Prof. Andria Jones-Bitton, a
professor in the Department of Population Medicine, analyzed more than 1,100
responses nationwide to an online stress and resilience survey, conducted on
agricultural producers from September 2015 to this past January.

“Some of the producer comments leave
little doubt about the impact their job and culture is having on them,”
Jones-Bitton said.

“One said, ‘We are not invincible,
but we feel we must be’. Another said, ‘What makes me the most upset is that I
have everything I dreamed of – love, family and a farm – and all I feel is
overwhelmed, out of control and sad.’”

The survey found 45 per cent of
survey respondents had high stress. Another 58 per cent were classified with
varying levels of anxiety, and 35 per cent with depression.

Overall, that’s two to four times
higher than farmers studied in the United Kingdom and Norway, Jones-Bitton
said.

Other signs of mental health problems
revealed by the survey are equally concerning, she added.

For example, significant numbers of
farmers had high levels of emotional exhaustion (38 per cent) and cynicism (43
per cent).

And resilience, popularly believed to
be a strength among producers, is lower among two-thirds of the respondents
than it is among a comparative U.S. population.

Indeed, in agriculture, a stigma is
associated with mental health treatment, Jones-Bitton said.

So it follows that the survey showed
40 per cent of respondents said they’d feel uneasy getting professional help
“because of what people might think.”

Another 31 per cent said seeking
professional help could stigmatize a person’s life. Fewer than half believe
there is adequate mental health support from the industry.

At the same time, more than
three-quarters of those surveyed said professional mental services can be
helpful in times of struggle, and almost as many said they would seek out such
help.

Jones-Bitton sees that as good news.
She is building a team of producers, industry representatives, veterinarians
and mental health professionals to create, deliver and evaluate a mental health
literacy training program for farmers.

This program would train people to
recognize and respond to mental distress, and reduce stigma around mental
health issues in Ontario’s agricultural sector.

“We need to do something,” she says.
“Farmers want help, and we’re going to find ways for them to receive it.”

Jones-Bitton and the Ontario
Veterinary College AWAR2E group – an acronym for Advancing Wellness and
Resilience in Research and Education — started out studying mental health among
veterinarians. The scope grew as it became clear producers also had issues.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Mexico has lifted the ban in imposed on Canadian beef in
2003 after an Alberta cow died of Bovine Spongiform Enchephalopathy (BSE, or
mad cow’s disease).

Mexico is one of the last countries to maintain the ban.

Canada, in turn, has lifted its requirement that all Mexican
visitors obtain a visa before being allowed into Canada.

"This move will make it easier for
our Mexican friends to visit Canada, while growing our local economies and
strengthening our communities," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The policy had been imposed
by the previous Conservative government to stem the flow of asylum
claims from Mexico which nearly tripled from 2005 to 2008, when
Mexicans accounted for more than 25 per cent of all refugee claims filed in
Canada.

The Canadian Meat Council and the
Canadian Cattlemen’s Association welcomed the announcement.

“Averaging
more than $130 million annually during the past five years, Mexico has ranked
consistently as one of Canada’s top three export markets for beef and veal
products,” said Canadian Meat Council Executive Director Jim Laws.

“Nevertheless,
the Mexican market has been closed to Canadian beef products derived from
animals 30 months and older as well as for ground meat and several specialty
meats. Today’s announcement will allow trade to resume for all beef and veal
products,” Laws said.

“The
full normalization of trade in beef products with Mexico has been a high
priority for the Canadian beef industry” said Canadian Meat Council President
Joe Reda.

It is
estimated that the resumption, effective October 1, of full access for beef and
veal products to the Mexican market will result in an increase of $10 million a
year in revenues for farmers and meat packers.

The
increase comes from anticipated price increases because Mexico will be paying
more than the current Canadian price for the beef it imports.

Dan
Darling, president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said the timing is
particularly welcome because fall is when most ranchers cull their cow herd and
now there will be improved market demand for those older than 30 months.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Now that
the United States Senate has passed a bill setting out GMO labeling standards,
it’s time for the Canadian Parliament to grapple with the same issue.

NDP MP Pierre-Luc Duseault
of Quebec has introduced a bill, but unlike the voluntary approach in the
United States, his bill would make GMO labeling mandatory.He has support from the
Organic Council of Ontario whose chairman, Tom Manley, said that if genetic
engineering is such a good idea, then food companies should be glad to put it
on their labels.

But opponents say there is
no health or safety reason to label GMO ingredients in foods because they are
no different than other ingredients that have not been genetically engineered. Indeed, one of the Health Canada requirements is that GMO crops be equivalent
in nutrition and safety.

I think it would make just as much sense to require that ingredients be labeled a grown with the help of sunshine and rain.Canada Organic Trade
Association spokesperson Tia Loftsgard says they’re working with the MP to
ensure the proper wording is used in the bill to reflect the need for mandatory
labelling of genetically engineered ingredients.

Purdue Farms is setting
high standards for chicken welfare, claiming the high ground in the North
American market.

The list of changes it
announced Monday will no doubt challenge the chicken supply-management industry
in Canada, particularly since it has the power to force a nation-wide standard.

Purdue said it will improve
care for birds on its farms, trucks and slaughterhouses, from installing
windows in 200 barns within the next18 months to using controlled-atmosphere
stunning before unloading chickens at processing plants.

Animal activist groups,
such as Mercy for Animals, are praising Purdue and challenging others to match
it.

Perdue said it will adopt
controlled atmosphere stunning at all of its slaughterhouses and stop shackling
them. This means the birds will be rendered unconscious before being unloaded.

Perdue uses this method at
one of its turkey plants, will be using it at one of its chicken plants by the
end of 2017, and will apply it at all of its plant over the next several years,
company officials said.

Purdue has windows in its
organic-standard barns and said it will add 200 of its other barns by the end
of next year to provide birds natural light. It will also add “enrichments”
such as hay bales and perches,and
provide more space per bird.

The company also said it
will start to test slow-growing birds to determine impacts on animal welfare
and product quality.

Perdue Farms, already about
14 years into efforts to remove antibiotics entirely from its products, is
effectively transferring practices it has learned from organic chicken
production, which it began five years ago after its acquisition of Coleman
Natural Foods.

Those have included feeding
more probiotics and natural herbs such as oregano and thyme to strengthen the
birds’ immune systems, allowing natural light to prompt activity, and providing
play apparatuses, among other things.

“We would have said we were
doing a pretty good job taking care of chickens based on their needs, but once
you look at organic husbandry and understand it … you realize there’s more to
it than just those needs,” Dr. Bruce Stewart-Brown, Perdue’s senior vice
president of food safety and quality, said today in a news teleconference.

On transparency, chairman Jim Perdue said “we expect people
to hold us accountable. This is going to be a long-term process, and we think
it’s important that people know exactly what we’re doing on this journey.”

Mercy For Animals president Nathan Runkle said in a
statement for news media that “it’s now time for Tyson, Foster Farms, and
others to stop dragging their feet and reduce the needless pain and suffering
animals endure on factory farms and in slaughterhouses.”

CBC reports that horsemeat has been detected in hamburger
marketed by Maison du
Rôti
at Plateau-Mont-Royal in Montreal.

Its report is based on an analysis of samples it submitted
to a lab at Trent University in Peterborough.

DNA testing found that
the beef patties, marketed as entirely made of beef by Maison du Rôti,
contained between 37 and 46 per cent horse meat. Radio-Canada tested beef
patties bought on May 9 and May 16, 2016.

Beef accounted for
about 38 to 53 per cent of the patty, and pork made up anywhere between seven
and 18 per cent.

Based on the CBC report, the Humane Society of Canada to
call for a ban on horsemeat slaughter.

No plant is certified to slaughter horses in the United
States, so most of their horses are slaughtered at Canadian plants in Alberta
and Quebec.

CBC says Maison du Roti supplies about 400 customers which
are hotels, restaurants and in the foodservice sector.

It is a violation of federal and provincial government
regulations to market meat that is improperly labelled.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Marilynn Crow has written a book about the seven generations
that have farmed in Puslinch Township, between Guelph and Cambridge, beginning
with those who cut fields out of the forest to her husband, Bill, who has
exported purebred pigs around the world.

It’s titled “To the Seventh Generation: The evolution of the
family farm in Canada 1823-2015”.

She has done a thorough job of researching the earliest
settlers and their descendants, including many neighbours of Ardyne Farm, which
backs on Highway 401 near Highway 6 that runs between Hamilton and Guelph.

She and Bill recently built a retirement home on the farm
and have stocked it with furniture and memorabilia saved by ancestors.

The book will obviously be of interest to Puslinch Township
and Wellington County farmers, but there is much that will resonate with any
Ontario family that has been farming here for more than two generations.

Friday, June 24, 2016

Sargent
Farms and
Boire & Freres
of Quebec will be building
a new hatchery in Woodstock.

“We
are pleased to see this kind of investment in hatchery capacity and
infrastructure in the Ontario chicken industry value chain,” said
Henry Zantingh, chairman
of Chicken Farmers of Ontario.

“Our
chicken farmers have a strong relationship with their local
hatcheries and depend heavily on the quality and service we receive
from our chick suppliers in order to ensure that our production meets
the evolving needs of our customers and our consumers.”

Chicken
board president and chief executive officer Rob Dougans said
“Ontario’s
chicken industry has been experiencing significant growth over recent
years, and CFO has been working to ensure that all stakeholders
including chicken farmers, chicken processors and hatcheries
understand the importance of meeting local consumer markets by
continuously improving our business standards, assets and production
practices.

“The
introduction of a new modern hatchery to the Ontario system will
further enable the quality, service, flexibility, and sustainability
of the Ontario chick supply.”

The
new hatchery, called Thames River Hatchery, is expected to be open
by the third quarter of 2017.

It
costs about
$10 million and will
have
an initial capacity of 20 million chicks per year.

CFO
farmer-members are expected to grow almost 220 million chickens this
year.

The
Vermont law takes effect July 1, which has been a looming deadline
for months for food manufacturers and lawmakers.

As
many consumer groups advocated, the proposed
Senate billwould
require food manufacturers to say if a food contains genetically
modified ingredients. However, consumers who are concerned about GMOs
may have to do some extra sleuthing when they read a product’s
label, which can disclose the GM foods through text, a symbol,
website link or QR code.

There
are a few exceptions to the labeling proposal. Foods that consist
primarily of beef, poultry, pork or eggs would not be required to
have a GM label, even if they ate GM corn or soybeans. “The
legislation prohibits the Secretary of Agriculture from considering
any food product derived from an animal to be bioengineered solely
because the animal may have eaten bioengineered feed,” the Senate
statement noted.

The
Liberal government is stalling a planned reduction in the number of
temporary foreign workers employers can import.

Ron
Davidson, speaking for the Canadian Meat Council, welcomed the
decision, but said it does not solve the problem of chronic shortages
of workers willing and able to take jobs in packing plants.

The
Harper administration put a 20 per cent cap on the number of jobs a
company can fill with temporary foreign workers and that was
scheduled to decline July 1 to 10 per cent. The Liberals are holding
it at 20 per cent, awaiting their review of the whole program.

Labour
Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk said the controversial temporary foreign
worker program needs an overhaul and will announce her plan for more
changes later this year.

"I
believe this is a prudent step to take as we work to develop a better
temporary foreign worker policy and fix some of the problems with the
program that emerged under the previous government," Mihychuk
said in a statement Thursday.

The
previous Conservative government started phasing in a cap on low-wage
temporary foreign workers — low-skilled employees paid less than
the provincial or territorial median hourly wage — in June 2014, as
part of reforms that also included disallowing use of the program in
regions of Canada with high unemployment rates.

Those
changes followed a series of controversies dogging the program,
including reports of fast-food franchise restaurants favouring
temporary foreign workers over local employees.

Employers
who first began hiring low-wage temporary foreign workers before the
cap came into effect will still be able to use it for 20 per cent of
their workforce.

Those
who started using the program after that point, or who are hiring
temporary foreign workers for the first time, are subject to a
10-per-cent cap.

All
the other program requirements — including having employers
ensuring that Canadians and permanent residents have the first
opportunities to apply for available jobs — will remain in place
while the cap is frozen.

These
changes do not apply to the seasonal foreign worker program many
farmers use.

CBC
reports that Jay Subramanian and his team of scientists at the
University of Guelph has developed a spray that can extend the shelf
life of fresh fruits by up to 50 per cent.

The
spray uses a nanotechnology-based application of hexanal, a natural
plant extract that prevents fruit spoilage.

"Before
[fruit] rot, they start to shrivel. The shrivelling
is the way fruit shows its age," said Subramanian, a professor
of plant agriculture at the Ontario Agriculture College.

The
hexanal inhibits the enzyme that breaks down cell walls, which causes
shriveling and rot, Subramanian explained.

"Once
the walls are protected, the cells are intact and so the whole
fruit stays intact," he said, meaning the fruit stays fresh
longer.

The
product is applied one and two weeks before the fruit is harvested.
Alternatively, fruit can be dipped into the solution after
harvest, then gently washed off.

The
result is fruit that lasts up to 50 per cent longer after harvest,
Subramanian said. Mangoes, he said, keep fresh for up to 23 days,
bananas for up to 40 days and peaches and nectarines – which
normally only keep fresh for a week – can see their shelf
life extended for another 10 days.

Resson Aerospace Corp. has raised $11 million US for research into
technology that will improve farming, especially under drought
conditions.

Resson
works out of a National Research Council laboratory in New Brunswick.
It raised $3 million in a previous round of funding.

This
time it’s backed by a number of venture-capital firms and will use
the money for research and development, to build sales operations and
to open an office in San Jose, Calif., hoping both to partner with
Californian agricultural universities and to leverage its technology
to assist with the state’s drought problems

“This
is truly global,” said Jeff Grammer, Resson’s executive chairman
and an early investor through his firm Rho Canada Ventures. “If you
look at McCain (Foods Ltd.), they basically have potato acreage
worldwide. They’re looking at this as a much wider program than
just New Brunswick.”

The
$11-million figure, worth about $14-million Canadian, would make the
deal one of the biggest early-stage funding rounds in the Atlantic
region since the financial crisis, according to data provided by
Thomson Reuters.

Contributing
to this round are Rho Canada, McCain, Halifax’s Build Ventures,
Saint John’s East Valley Ventures, the New Brunswick Innovation
Foundation, BDC Capital, and lead investor Monsanto Growth Ventures,
the venture-capital arm of seed company Monsanto.

“We
were quite impressed by the drive that they have, the uniqueness of
what they’re trying to do, and the level of sophistication they’re
trying to get to,” McCain chief executive officer Dirk Van de Put
told The Globe and Mail.

Using
photos of crops – from tractor cameras, drones or satellite imagery
– the company has developed image-processing technology that,
combined with ground-sensor data, uses large-scale cloud-based data
processing to help farmers assess crop production and field
conditions. “Using their algorithms on the imaging side and what’s
happening in the dirt itself, they’re able to do predictive
analytics,” Mr. Grammer said. “It helps a farmer understand what
diseases could be coming to their farms.”

Eventually,
he said, the technology could be harvested to help farmers achieve
maximum return on investment for their businesses, such as by helping
farmers figure out how much water or herbicide they should use on a
given field.